TV Lately: Shiny Sparkly Edition

Nothing ever really changed the impression I got after watching the first season of the show, and that hadn't changed from the impression I had before I'd watched any of it. But I thought the last episode was worth a lot, not because the nihilism had been replaced with something I liked better, but because it played to its own strengths. The entire scheme that Walt pulled off was so damn clever, covering every single loose end from getting the money legally to his family, to saving Jesse, to taking out everyone who was still dangerous (and probably the entire meth industry in the southwest along with them). Given the state we had last seen him in, it seemed completely impossible, so watching it all come together had a Pitagora Suichi kind of satisfaction to it.

Also, I should acknowledge that the nihilism was addressed in a way I found very respectable. The main character's actions throughout the entire show weren't excused and he wasn't redeemed, as such, but he faced the truth and did what he could to clean up his mess so that the people who outlived him wouldn't keep suffering for it. When the finale first aired, I heard snatches of it from the next room over, and I remembered the conversation between Walt and Skyler about "doing this for our family" -- only it was obscured and sans context, so I thought that she wanted to hear that he had good intentions, and he was twisting the knife by denying it. It was a relief to find that he was actually confessing to his own selfishness.

I'm still kind of glad it's over, and don't have any interest in watching Better Call Saul.

Came as a surprise to find I actually really like the Twelfth Doctor! The accent helps a whole lot -- didn't know about it before I started watching -- and I like the ambiguity about whether he's a good man, and whether that justifies him acting like such a jerk most of the time. I had felt fairly neutral about Clara when she was matched with Eleven, but I think her self-confidence plays off of the jerk perfectly. I love it that he's not just blunt but downright insulting, and he gets away with it because he's not getting away with it because Clara. Her boyfriend is more interesting and fun than I was expecting, too.

I'm near the end of Season 8. Apparently Arya shows up in the next one? I think the Eleven/Amy/Rory era will always be my favorite, but I'm glad I decided to catch up.

I was going to do a joking post about how every scene in this show seems to be punctuated with Ross Poldark galloping along the cliff's edge on his awesome horse, but somehow, I couldn't find a gif of Ross Poldark galloping along the cliff's edge on his awesome horse. Did the internet not realize that the entire soul of the series could have been expressed in a single gif?

Anyway, that basically covers my own feelings. I love the scenery, I love the costumes, I love the scandalous (I say, positively scandalous) romance, I love how I watched this actor playing a vampire for three seasons and he's somehow hotter in this role. Simon pointed out in maybe the first episode that the scenes are extremely short, and it's one of those things that's incredibly annoying once you notice it. We may or may not continue; we left off around the fourth episode (~*so scandalous*~) to watch a few movies instead (he really liked Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which I count as a victory), and next I'll want to start on GoT S6, of course.

After six seasons the shine wears off of pretty much any show, so I now wait for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to hit Netflix before I watch. I still get pretty psyched for when it does, though! The first half of the season was great and I hear there's Changelings and D&D in the second half. But I'm not sure they'll ever top the introduction of Quibble Pants, voiced by Patton Oswalt.

And just checking in on those two Disney cartoons I wanted to keep an eye on when they were announced...

It's hard to find full episodes, which is just as well. It's geared at a young enough age group that an entire 22 minutes feels too long, so I periodically comb YouTube for scenes featuring the movies' canon characters. (The new ones aren't doing anything for me. The cheetah should have been my favorite, but they gave her this really horrible design and left her as the token female.) I wasn't sure there would be much of an effort to keep a continuity, but they just brought in the "Outsiders" from the no-really-it's-pretty-good sequel, which made the whole thing feel a little more legit. I have a weird obsession with coming up with workable fanwanks for this verse, so in a way, the more continuity errors I find, the more interested I get. Lion cubs need fathers and it falls to us to find them.

Mad props must be fairly distributed for giving canon something it desperately needed: a good hyena character. She's a girl, she has an awesome voice, and she and Kion sing a catchy tune together, "Sisi No Sawa", about not really being that different. Jasiri makes up for the cheetah!

I stopped watching a while ago. It's the kind of thing I'd watch if it was on while I was flipping through channels, but I never flip through channels, so.